Apps for the printing industry are few and far between, as we mentioned in a recent Bindery Success article. Two new ones were just introduced by Manfred Breede, Professor Emeritus of Ryerson University’s School of Graphic Communications Management.
Apps for the printing industry are few and far between, as we mentioned in a recent Bindery Success article. Two new ones were just introduced by Manfred Breede, Professor Emeritus of Ryerson University’s School of Graphic Communications Management.
You might think that a discussion about folding machine productivity could never be heated. Think again! In our experience, the subject of folder speed versus productivity was divisive, causing lengthy discussions and loud disagreements among folder operators and shop management.
One of the first things I learned to make in the bindery was the scratch pad. Whenever there were uncoated text sheets in a pressman’s make-ready pile, with a clean, unprinted side, we’d swipe them to make pads.
According to Apple's website, there are more than 350,000 apps for their iPhone and iPads. Android has apps numbering somewhere in the tens of thousands. No one knows for sure. There are apps to tell you where to eat, what movie to see, for tracking packages and for doing pushups.
So you'd think in our high-tech printing and bindery industry there would be lots of helpful apps, right? After an admittedly quick search, I found all of 23. And that's all on one site.
The best part of this story is who is doing the creating. My guess would have been some teenager working in his parent's print shop on the weekends, distracting himself from running a folding machine or packing boxes. Or maybe a new 20-something employee bored with his entry-level duties.
There's one topic that routinely generates considerable unease when I speak with owners, managers and supervisors in the printing and bindery industry, or any small business. It's the employee or co-worker with the dreaded 'bad attitude.'
Several recent blog articles highlighted popular troubleshooting and setup techniques aimed at keeping signatures perfectly registered to the head as they travel the length of the saddle stitching machine. The tactic we're covering today is part of our series on the battle for register and it’s a simple one. In some ways it's really more of an insurance policy against mis-register. You won’t always need it but it’s a lifesaver when you have it to draw on!
I'll never forget the day I almost made a grown man cry over a cutting job. He was a good customer who came in that day for a press OK. While there, he decided to see how one of his label jobs was progressing and I happened to be setting up the job on the cutter.
In previous posts we discussed several tips to fix signature registration problems in saddle stitched books, most of which are helpful for both signature pockets as well as cover feeders. Once the book passes the cover feeder (or the first pocket if you don’t have a cover feeder) it passes into something of a no man’s land prior to the stitching unit. Today we'll look at two more tips to help in this area.
Saddle stitcher calipers are a key component in any stitching system. When set correctly they’ll detect missing or double signatures in the book, then stop the stitching mechanism and reject the book so signatures can be re-used.